Today’s readings: Hosea 14:2-10; Mark 12:28-34
Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And You
shall love your neighbor as yourself.-Mark 12:29-31
This seems to be one of the most common Bible passages quoted. And, sometimes it seems that people forget
the first command and go to the second.
The trouble seems to be that if it is not understood in light of the
first, then it becomes a subjective look at Christianity. I am thinking of how people say, “I’m a good
person. I’m nice to people. I give money to charities. I’m not mean to people. I am doing what is necessary and nothing
more. Isn’t that enough?”
These things are obviously not bad and we should strive to be kind to
all people…but we try to say that our own humanness is good enough to deserve
Heaven…we don’t have to worry about anything else.
We must begin with the first command, which is to love our God with all
our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
That is crazy!
But how do we do that? I have
been reading this book called Interior Freedom by Jacques Philippe, an amazing writer with
a lot of spiritual wisdom. The book
focuses on really learning to not only accept whatever comes our way…BUT
CONSENTING TO IT! That has struck me a
lot. I have to choose the good and the ‘seemingly’
negative? I have to choose this
life. Today I was praying The Stations of the Cross with meditations written by Blessed John Paul
II-while he was Pope (It’s called The way of the Cross: A sign of
contradiction). On the station when
Jesus falls the first time…JPII gives a great meditation on the acceptance of
Jesus. When Jesus said, “not my will,
but yours be done,” he meant it. And so
when he was beaten, his clothes were torn, he was tired, being ridiculed,
falling under the weight of the cross, and everything else up to and including
his death…he CHOSE every part. He could
have been saved from any of it. But, he
chose to give his entire being to the Father…so that their love can be shown victoriously
to the world! And so he let those things
happen.
That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt!
He never tells us that loving him wouldn’t hurt. We are going to face difficult decisions. We are going to be asked to make
sacrifices. We are going to be
disciplined to learn to love. All of
that includes pain. But if getting to
heaven is our goal, and God wills nothing but for us to be with him in heaven…then
we must be willing to accept the molding that is taking place in our lives.
It truly baffles me why it is soooooooo hard to love God with
everything. Think about it. The people we like spending my time with are
people that we believe have our best interest in mind. We feel like we can trust them to help us. It is EXTREMELY easy for me to hang out with
those people. I enjoy it so much that I
try to get people to hang out with me all of the time.
I truly, truly believe God wants the best for me and everyone
else. I truly believe that he has my
back and loves to hang out with me…So, why is it so hard for me to return that? Why is it so hard for any of us? I am baffled how I can intellectually and
emotionally desire both to be right next to him, and desire to do what I want
and ignore him.
I am getting to the point. :)
In my experience I have noticed that the times that I am probably
looking more at my will than God’s will, I don’t have as positive of an outlook
about who I am and what I am capable of.
I’m so scared of change and pain that I shy away from really doing
anything. And, I’m probably not the only
one.
I think the reason is because if I am not trying to direct my heart,
mind, soul and strength to God, then I am ignoring the true love being given to
me. In effect, I block that love from
myself and I begin to stop loving myself.
When we continue to live this way, we begin to believe that mediocre
care is good. Mediocre effort is
fine. Mediocre support is justified.
And that lack of love that we have for ourselves…because we ignore
actual, true love…becomes the basis for how we treat others. Again, you may look like a good person…but
you are FORGETTING a key ingredient…Love!
I am far from an expert on being able to love God with my WHOLE heart,
soul, mind and strength…but I have found a way that helps. I have written two prayers that I see every
day. Both of them thank God for the
opportunity for all the struggles and gifts I have that day. And both of them point out a personality
trait that sometimes I forget about in myself.
So, when I pray these I am reminded that I have the right to choose what
comes and when I do I seem to be a much happier person throughout the day.
We have to begin with the first command…to love God about ALL else. As we start to see His love unfold in our
lives we can begin to love ourselves more perfectly. As you start to see how amazing you are and
how peaceful letting go can be…you desire that so much for other people as well! You wish everyone around you can see the
beauty that you see! You wish you could
eloquently speak of the greatness that you witness in them…and you try to bring
it out! This is when we love others the
way that God asks. Jesus
knew that he had to choose his Father’s will, AND he knew that he COULD (with
all its pain and agony) because of his established love and friendship with the
Father! That is what we have to
develop. We have to develop that
friendship if we want to be able to love ourselves and others in the perfect
love of God.
As we get close to the mid-way point of Lent, let us approach the Lord
and beg him to explode in our lives (watch out though because He likes to
answer prayers). :) Allow him to show us how
liberating it is to love him and choose
him above all else. Allow him to show
you just how astonishing and beautiful you are…so that you will be encouraged
even more to love each person you meet into freedom!
No comments:
Post a Comment